Low impact studies are often rooted in misaligned teams.

I gave a talk at the #gamesUR 2024 Virtual Speaker Summit about getting to know our stakeholders better, and some approaches to consider to explore their needs before starting a research study.

Game development is a high pressure and hectic decision making environment, and it’s easy for research to get forgotten about. Without appropriate work before running your study, you can end up with disengaged stakeholders, irrelevant research objectives, low impact research studies and ultimately research being ignored. Successful research studies are built on strong foundations – and the root of many of these problems lie in the kick-off.

In this session, I look at techniques for understanding our stakeholders better before the study begins, and exactly what information you should be collecting before a research study gets started, in order to run high impact research studies.

View the talk below on YouTube:

There were some fantastic talks as part of this series, including:

🔎 Doing it Right – Managing a Global Research Gaming Panel – Jesse Divnich
🧙‍♂️ I worked for your dream studio. It was fine. – John Hopson
💵 GUR Salary Survey 2024 – Andrew Menger-Ogle & Jonathan Dankoff
🕷 The Carcinization of Azeroth: Exploring Arachnophobia Accessibility in World of Warcraft – Nikki Crenshaw

You can view them all on the IGDA GUR-SIG playlist – thanks to EA’s Lanie Dixon, and Bethesda’s Elisabeth Whyte for organising the event.